All Rise...

Editor's Note

The Charge

Sub-title: "Much Ado About Nothing"

Opening Statement

After completing a variety of films that made her a household name in France,
Brigitte Bardot collaborated with her husband Roger Vadim (in his first
directing effort) on the film And
God Created Woman (1956). A rather sensual film and good advertising for St.
Tropez, it went over very well abroad, earning $4 million in the United States
alone. Heartened by the film's success, Bardot and Vadim collaborated on screen
again with Les bijoutiers du claire de lune, known internationally as
The Night Heaven Fell. This time, Vadim had Cinemascope and Spain
replaced the French Riviera as the setting, but the film (which Vadim also
co-wrote) had little life—so little that not even a few provocative
outfits and poses by Bardot could enliven it.

Home Vision Entertainment has now made The Night Heaven Fell
available on DVD as part of its Brigitte Bardot Collection.

Facts of the Case

Ursula returns from a convent to stay with her aunt and uncle. While Ursula
travels from the train station to their villa, Lamberto—a local young
stud—steals a ride in her car. His sister has just committed suicide,
apparently after being seduced by Ursula's uncle, and Lamberto plans to confront
him. Lamberto, however, is brutally beaten and only saved by Ursula's
intervention.

As the days pass, Ursula realizes that her aunt and uncle are estranged and
she finds herself the object of her uncle's unwanted attentions. Eventually,
Lamberto recovers and he returns and kills Ursula's uncle. He then sleeps with
her sexually deprived aunt and when he is charged with uncle's murder soon
thereafter, he flees with Ursula's help into the hills. The two embark on an
increasingly desperate trek as Lamberto seeks a way to escape from Spain and the
pursuing authorities.

The Evidence

It was the innocence of the 1950s that made films like those Brigitte Bardot
appeared in seem titillating. Nowadays, one wonders what the fuss was about.
Stripped of such innocence, one is only left with the story and the mechanics of
filmmaking that went into it. In an earlier film such as Plucking The Daisy, the remains were quite
palatable, but that is far from the case with The Night Heaven Fell.

It shouldn't necessarily have been so, for director Roger Vadim had a decent
budget at his disposal that allowed for the use of colour and Cinemascope,
extensive location shooting in Spain, Bardot as the star, and even money for an
international name such as Stephen Boyd to co-star. It was all for naught,
though, because Vadim (with Jacques Rémy) first managed to concoct an
incredibly banal script and then did a very uneven job filming it. The fight
that he stages between Lamberto and Ursula's uncle has to be one of the most
pathetically choreographed efforts ever committed to film. Given that John Wayne
and Yakima Canutt had worked out the mechanics of how to stage realistic
fist-fight scenes about two decades previously, Vadim's work here is
unacceptably poor. But that's only the first of a number of instances in which
Vadim tries our patience. Far too many shots are drawn out too lengthily and his
selection of long shot vs. medium shot vs. close-up is questionable. Camera
placement often seems more designed to draw attention to itself than to further
the plot (for example, the overhead shots in the windmill).

Not particularly helpful either are the efforts of the main actors. Brigitte
Bardot and Stephen Boyd have about as much animation as a couple of totem poles.
Bardot seems to have regressed; she's not nearly as natural and appealing as in
earlier films. Some of her reactions are phony-looking, as though she were an
untried rookie at film-making. Boyd, who was interesting earlier in The Man Who Never Was (1956) and would be
again in later years (Ben-Hur [1959]) was
generally more at home in action-oriented pictures. The turgid drama of The
Night Heaven Fell doesn't suit him and his physical movements on the screen
seem mechanical, as though he realizes that he's not in his element.

Lest one think the film's a complete bust, let me point out that Spain makes
a great setting for the picture. Alida Valli (memorable from The Third Man), who here plays
Ursula's aunt, brings some dignity and professionalism to the proceedings.

Home Vision Entertainment presents The Night Heaven Fell in its
original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, anamorphically enhanced, and utilizing 19 scene
selections. This is a good workmanlike effort. The image is generally crisp and
clear, but it's not without a number of speckles and the odd soft patch. Colour
fidelity is quite pleasing. Blacks are generally solid and shadow detail, with a
few exceptions, is fine. Overall, one could say that the image transfer is more
than the film deserves.

The audio is composed of a Dolby Digital French mono track with optional
English subtitles. The sound is quite clear for a film of this vintage and the
subtitling is well done, conveying the French dialogue accurately and with just
the right amount of detail to allow comprehension without being burdensome.
There is one instance near the end of the film (while Bardot and Boyd are in the
caves) when a couple of lines of Bardot's spoken dialogue drops out. The
accompanying subtitles are present, however.

Supplements are meager. There are trailers for the film plus two other
Bardot films and a Bardot filmography. This time, we don't get the postcards
that Home Vision including in the Plucking the Daisy DVD case.

Closing Statement

The Night Heaven Fell is a Bardot entry that delivers little. The film
has a poor script, is directed as though the director were an amateur, and
features principal actors who seem ill at ease when they appear to be alive at
all. Home Vision's DVD is a more-than-reasonable effort given the film's merit.
If you only want to have one example of a Brigitte Bardot film in your
collection, this isn't the one.